That man was my husband. Preston Pierce, the youngest, most celebrated Chief of Obstetrics on the Eastern Seaboard. He was clad in immaculate, pale blue sterile scrubs, a surgical mask obscuring everything but those narrow, elongated eyes I had trusted for seven years. Yet, in this moment, those eyes were utterly devoid of their customary warmth. Instead, they radiated a condescending frost, laced with naked impatience.
“Spare me the theatricals,” Preston’s voice sliced through the mechanical panic of the room, heavy with unquestionable authority. “Her pelvic parameters meet the criteria. Natural birth optimizes fetal cardiopulmonary function. You’d think weaponizing her medical degree to play the entitled martyr would be beneath her.”
I clamped my teeth into my lower lip so violently that the intense metallic tang of blood flooded my palate. Clammy sweat pasted my thin hospital gown to my skin, pooling at the curve of my spine to form a freezing puddle on the waterproof pad beneath my shattered body. I was Elena Vance, Chief of Emergency Medicine at a Level-One Trauma Center. I understood the catastrophic failure cascade my body was enduring better than anyone breathing in this room. Forcing a natural extraction of an infant this size guaranteed severe perineal avulsion, or worse—a catastrophic uterine rupture and lethal exsanguination.
